Sugar-free parents are destroying the joy of Easter by rationing their children’s chocolate…

Easter is a wonderful time of the year. Stuffing your face with chocolate is completely acceptable and there are a whole four days to spend time quality time with family and friends.

It’s a time when normal rules about sweet treats don’t apply and you might just end up with a chocolate induced stomach ache. Some parents, however, are being dubbed ‘Easter Grinches’ for choosing to limit how much they let their children indulge over the long weekend.

A Sticky Situation

Parents aiming to reduce their children’s sugar intake over Easter often opt to buy gifts instead of chocolate, but many believe this is doing more harm than good.

Barbara O’Reilly (known as Patchwork Cactus to her followers) admitted that things are getting out of hand.

“Are we really doing this? Are kids really getting a pile of toys from the Easter bunny now?” she wrote. “The trend towards chocolate-free Easter gifts has somehow gotten way out of control.”

It does seem like a once simple celebration, with a couple of chocolate eggs, a cuddly toy for younger kids, and floury Easter bunny footprints, has turned into a full-blown gift-giving extravaganza. And for what? To prevent a few days of sticky fingers and a once a year break from the rules? It all sounds a little over the top to us…

It’s Only Temporary

While showering your child with gifts instead of chocolate may not sound ‘grinchy’, the idea that children can’t have a couple of Easter eggs once a year is. Kids are only kids for a fleeting amount of time, ideally able to eat whatever they want without guilt or judgment. Restricting them constantly, especially when they are surrounded by temptation, is only going to lead to issues later on.

Extreme Easter

That being said, we can completely understand parents being concerned about the extreme Easter eggs that have become somewhat of a trend in recent years. One Cadbury creation was even labelled ‘dangerous’ for children under four due to its size and sugar content. There’s also a gynormous 6kg Violet Crumble easter egg on sale this year, costing $250 and available from Costco. This egg contains around whopping 32,000 calories (which would be the entire nutritional needs for an average person for 16 days – based on 2,000 calories per day.) Wow!

Excess of any kind, whether that’s gifts or chocolate, is never a good thing and we’re definitely not endorsing kids eating whatever they want all year round. Allowing your kids to have a few sweet treats for one weekend, however, isn’t the end of the world, and is well worth the excitement and magic when they wake up on Sunday morning!

Are you guilty of being an ‘Easter Grinch’? Let us know in the comments below!